Selkie 1088

They also don’t kiss, but that would probably be a poor segue for Then to make.

Answering a question had in the last few comments: sarnothi saliva is a paralytic venom. Selkie’s skin contact smooches only gave a painful irritation because she (1) didn’t break the skin and (B) is still a kid, a juvenile. Her potency isn’t developed yet. A bite from an adult sarnothi would render the affected area or even the entire body immobile, on top of the burning irritant factor. Death by cessation of breathing or heart muscles is also a possibility with this.

Hence the forehead-touches as an affection display.

(one sarnothi can affect other sarnothi but they won’t affect themselves, which is why Carrie could do the hand-smooch earlier.)

Even Selkie’s hospitalization was in part because the faculty didn’t realize just how much of a big deal being out in the cold is for her, so yea there are definitely things that will need to be shared now that sarnothi are going to be around.

Yes and no. Selkie at that point had heating pads that made it reasonable for her to be able to go outside long enough for recess with the other kids. I suppose if the staff had known about the heating pads they might have been more aware of Selkie to be sure the heating pads stayed in place? Ultimately, Selkie’s hospitalization was because the staff outside weren’t really monitoring any of the kids at all or Truck would never have had a chance to attack her in the first place.

i wonder, is it dangerous for humans to share food with sarnothi? cause children share food often enough. like, if a human eats food a sarnothi has eaten from, is that poisonous or are the trace amount from that low enough as to not be dangerous?

While I agree with you, the forward-facing eyes came before the other predatory adaptations of humans. All primates have binocular vision as an adaptation for arboreal locomotion. Even though humans aren’t arboreal, that’s the origin of our forward-facing eyes.

The other adults have never seen a Sarnothi in person before. Likely a great many of them haven’t even thought to question what sort of specific differences there are between themselves and the Sarnothi. It’s not a matter of being irresponsible; it’s a matter that not everybody thinks of these things in great detail right off the bat.

“Concerned adults”. One I’m somewhat believing. Prof seems to despise a tiny race of refugees and wants them out. Going all ‘I want NORMAL children safe from these horrible horrible creatures! They have venomous spit that can cause minor skin irritants and blah blah blah blah blah!’. Like. He definitely seems to dislike them and for no given reason. Aside from their different from him. Which is very jerkish and very speciesist of him.

Well, let’s put it this way. Were it MY kid and I was in the same situation I’d have the same attitude.

Then doesn’t have children. The very idea that he thinks he can express children’s behavior in absolutes makes my skin crawl. You seriously can’t imagine the insane things kids can come up with. I give his career, oh, 20 minutes.

As a parent, I wouldn’t want absolutes, I want contingency plans.

“OK, so they absolutely positively never never no never will ever bite another kid, ever ever ever.

–SO what happens when they do? What do we do about it?”

Nature’s an evil bitch who will not hesitate to pee all over your well-founded plans the minute you turn your back.

I wouldn’t. I’d never treat refugees like this and I’d expect my kids not to either. They’re CHILDREN. Not monsters and not things that’ll hurt anyone worse than other kids. Like seriously?

You’re acting as if they’re monsters. They’re a different species is all. It’s not like they’re going to eat another dang student. D=< I'm disappointed in people here. These are kids going through a rough time. How can these two jerks treating them like they're toxic weapons be sitting well with anyone?

You have to plan for the most outrageous, ridiculous things that can happen, because, guess what, they DO happen.

My mother is a first-grade teacher, she could tell you stories, oh man.

The ONLY reservation I have with having the Sarnothi kids in school is that we can’t repeat what happened with Selkie– because everything about her was classified, they had to experiment with her to figure out how she would interact with others. Gill-cleaning, meat-eating, alternative PE for when it’s cold, all of that.

Now that the “Sarnothi Secret” is out in the open, it is NOT the time to be acting like everything is classified– the Sarnothi need to be open and up-front about any issues that are going to come up– and the Humans will also have to be open and up-front about things that maybe the Sarnothi aren’t gonna understand.

My concern in this comic is that 1) we don’t have open communication yet– Then is hiding things that maybe shouldn’t be hidden and 2) Then seems to think that kids are a known quantity– his statement “I’d stake my career on it” is the HEIGHT of arrogance and not understanding just how unpredictable children, both Sarnothi and Human, can be.

Selkie has proven that Sarnothi children can be as unpredictable and wild as human children– hopefully someone other than Todd, Andi and their teachers are paying attention to that.

@all-purpose:
So this is why all my plans are ruint. I’ve been Old-Schooling it with paper and Schaefer’s blue-black ink. I should be using Mylar film and a Sharpie!!
Thanks, this ought to fix Nature’s meddling incontinence issues!

Considering that the cat didn’t like biting Selkie, it’s possible that the taboos aren’t just “don’t bite!” but are instead “don’t bite” linked with “and if you do, you will regret it because it will make your mouth burn if you break the skin.”

Teaching a human not to bite is hard because the consequences of biting are minor – to the biter at least. But if the sarnothi are poisonous to each the consequences to the biter would be greater to the biter than to the one being bitten: Learning not to bite would be real quick if the first time you did it you felt sick, like Todd’s cat did.

Sarnothi venom affecting other Sarnothi is just weird, just about all poisonous species are immune to their own venom, and individual members of the specie don’t each have an unique venom, I can only see 2 ways it would work, 1, their immunity is mystical in some way, and so it only protect against their own venom, or 2, it’s in truth not a venom, but some form of virus that act like a venom, and so it’s dangerous to all but themselves.

Otherwise it don’t make much sense, the whole reason that you can have standardized cures for animal poison or venom, is that all members have basically the same venom, with only inconsequential variations.

If Sarnothi aren’t immune to other Sarnothi’s venom, then their venom has to be individualized in some way, which will be a nightmare in regards to antidotes, if they all had the same venom, an antidote could be made and kept in stock just in case, but with individual venoms, a school with Sarnothi in it can’t stock antidotes just in case.

Not necessarily – think of hot sauce. There’s many different forms of capsacin delivery, but certain chemicals or foods (milk, celery) still cut down the burning. Different forms of heat, such as black pepper (in large amounts) aren’t quite the same.
In the same way, you might be able to halt a venom’s spread through use of a specific chemical -that would work- even if the particular variety of venom is different.

ALSO, as a general note, venom is produced in venom sacks much like human stomach acid is produced in stomachs. If stomach acid gets outside the stomach, it burns despite being made by us. In the same way it could be entirely possible that Sarnothi bodies are not immune to the venom, only the venom sacks, except that we’ve had an example of a Sarnothi being able to kiss themselves without issue.
Maybe that Sarnothi was just a mutant? (Time for some X-Men/Sarnothi comics!)

Not necessarily – think of hot sauce. There’s many different forms of capsacin delivery, but certain chemicals or foods (milk, celery) still cut down the burning. Different forms of heat, such as black pepper (in large amounts) aren’t quite the same.
In the same way, you might be able to halt a venom’s spread through use of a specific chemical -that would work- even if the particular variety of venom is different.

ALSO, as a general note, venom is produced in venom sacks much like human stomach acid is produced in stomachs. If stomach acid gets outside the stomach, it burns despite being made by us. In the same way it could be entirely possible that Sarnothi bodies are not immune to the venom, only the venom sacks, except that we’ve had an example of a Sarnothi being able to kiss themselves without issue.
Maybe that Sarnothi was just a mutant? (Time for some X-Men/Sarnothi comics!).

It’s not always true that all poisonous species are immune to their own venom. Some snakes are immune to the venom of their own species, but some aren’t. In fact there are some snakes that can die if they bite themselves.

curious, is it that they are not immune at all, or only have a weak resistance to the venom from other sarnothi? it would be much easier to see just a weak resistance. it would lead to the same need for cultural rules about venom contact pretty much.

and what is an early age? selkie seems to not really know about the rules or else the one kiss we saw would likely not have happened.

Selkie got the beginning of the socialization, I’m sure, but it stopped when she was deposited in the orphanage at the age of five. It’s been three, almost four, years, and you can’t expect a child to remember ideas she didn’t yet understand, from that long ago, without reinforcement. Also, she resisted believing it when she did find out, because it felt like an enforced separation from Todd and the Smith family, where she so intensely wanted to belong.

The “guppies” are different. Then is probably right about the prohibition being quite deeply internalized in normally-raised Sarnothi of that age.

(Of course, for meta story reasons… seeing this issue be discussed does suggest that something will go wrong, some way. Sure, it could just be Dave’s way to fill in some background information… but it could also turn out to be important later. We’ll have to wait and find out!)

I have to say, Then is taking a really shitty approach to all of this. Not only was he withholding information, but he seems genuinely annoyed or even outright pissed when it doesn’t just get brought up, but when people state the very obvious.

He doesn’t really have the right to his behavior. He’s glossing over so, so much and the reality is, they can all be issues. Like, sure, the kids are educated on biting, spitting and claws. That doesn’t mean mistakes don’t happen.

And frankly, if I was a teacher or a parent and I discovered he wasn’t even being upfront about all of this, well, it would make me nervous. Even with Dave’s commentary he states that as children their venom is really more of an irritant than anything else at this stage. That would have been something very good to go over so parents wouldn’t have to worry about their children going into shock from a bite or spit.

You’d think the goverment would have made an effort to work a little harder at this given what’s happened in the past. But they are still completely half-assing it.